Sent to Seduce the General Who Conquered My Clan novel · Chapter 8 of 24
Chapter 8: The Cellar
Ji-hwan went back to the Hall of Nine Strings that afternoon in the pink silk he had worn the first night.
He told the General he was fetching his second zither, which was true, and he did not tell him the rest.
Oh Man-su received him in his study, among the scrolls and the plum branches in blue vases.
He poured tea.
Ji-hwan did not drink it.
"You didn't bring it," Oh Man-su said pleasantly.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because the Inspector offered to buy my contract," Ji-hwan said, "and you told him it was for sale."
Oh Man-su smiled, round and kind, with his ring turning on his thumb.
"I told him what he needed to hear.
"We use whom we must, Ji-hwan.
"You were never going anywhere."
"What is the tally for?"
"You know what it is for."
"I know you told me for six years that it would let us walk into Cheongseong and take it back.
"You never told me how."
Oh Man-su looked at him for a long moment.
Ji-hwan watched him decide.
"The north is full of men who loved your father," Oh Man-su said.
"They are armed.
"They are waiting in the hills with eleven hundred horses.
"On the first night of the new year, the General's tally will open the Northern Pass from the inside."
"Open it for whom?"
"The Wolf Banner."
The room went cold.
The Wolf Banner was the name for the steppe raiders who came over the pass in the years before the siege, burning villages for horses.
Ji-hwan's father had spent his whole life keeping them out.
"You're letting the raiders in," Ji-hwan said.
"I am borrowing them.
"They will take the garrisons, and our men will take the fortress.
"The raiders will take the grain towns on their way home.
"That is the price.
"Five villages, perhaps six."
"That's thousands of people!"
"Four thousand," Oh Man-su said gently.
"It is a small cost for Cheongseong."
Ji-hwan stood up.
His hands shook so hard that the teacup rattled in its saucer.
"My father would have cut your throat."
"Your father is dead, child," Oh Man-su said.
"A general killed him.
"And you have been sleeping in that general's bed."
Ji-hwan could not answer.
It was true, and it was the ugliest thing anyone had ever said to him, and it was true.
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